"It’s a tough job, but somebody’s got to do it," - that 'somebody' is António Domingues who as the new Chairman of Caixa Geral de Depósitos will struggle by on €423,000 a year - or €30,000 a month for 14 months each year, with ample vacation and a bonus of up to 50% of his fixed salary.
The remuneration package funded by the taxpayer-owned bank is, according to the Finance Minister, about right compared to others in the banking sector, a sector already noted for its fat-cat, callous and often incompetent directors, a sector that has seen big brand names such as BES and Banif collapse leaving shareholders and investors high and dry.
These banking collapses have been due to a lack of regulation from the Bank of Portugal and due to the incompetence of directors to leading to insolvency, share price collapse and cries for help.
The bright new management team at Caixa Geral de Depósitos took office at the end of August and only six weeks later has the public been advised of the salaries of the luminaries hired on its behalf as the pay deals were revealed in parliament by the Finance Minister, Mario Centeno.
Other executive board members will have a salary "which also corresponds to the average industry salary, of €337,000 a year.” assured Centeno, who later added that all the directors could earn half as much again in bonus payments, based on performance.
The non-executive directors will receive €49,000 per year, "which incidentally is a little lower than average,” Centeno revealed to a relieved nation but did not mention how many days or hours this €49,000 would buy.
Besides Antonio Domingues, there is the non-executive vice chairman, Emídio Rui Vilar, six executive directors (Emídio Pinheiro, Henrique Menezes, João Paulo Martins, Paulo da Silva, Pedro Leitão and Tiago Marques) and three non-execs (Angel Corcóstegui Guraya, Herbert Walter and Pedro Norton de Matos.)
Domingues refused to take the job unless his starting salary was taken out of the previous civil service framework and substantially raised to reflect his immense importance and lack of grasp of the concept of ‘public service.’ His starting pay is 70% higher than his predecessor's.
To help Caixa Geral along its way to future, bonus-filled profitablilty, the taxpayer will soon be funding anything up to €5 billion as part of a 'rescue package' to pull yet another appallingly run Portuguese bank from the brink of collapse.
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